I was brought right back to art college ethic of “make lots of things quickly and see what happens” yesterday at the fantastic Dennis Hack Day. Craft, analysis and iteration can come later – there has to be a place in the process where you just do stuff quickly and see what things you make. Yesterday was just that – amplified and accelerated.
Our team divided the day into two shifts – firstly we focused on getting a clear idea of how our product worked and who it would solve problems for. The second was how we were going pitch that in two minutes to the – rather tough – panel.
We had some great input from the moderators who included the Dennis Media Factory and @RobBoynes. But what was illustrated best for me was the power of conversation to generate ideas and things. We developed some questioning techniques that I think I will be using again and expanding upon:
– Why would you use this product for more than a week?
– Why would you recommend it to your friends?
– What is it similar to?
– Why is it better?
If the answer didn’t help us write the brief I just told the team member to keep talking till it did… it worked: We won highly commended after the presentation and a 2 minute grilling from the panel.
An interesting and fun day in which things were made by all.
ideas/forms/functions 